I imagine myself leaning over the edge of some remote cliff with a conch shell in my hand, summoning the bloggers of Azeroth to my aid.

Anyrate, I'm Ego (The Egotistical Priest - but we're all friends here, right? We can drop the formality).

And I find myself at a crux. A crucial crossroads, wherin the future of my blog shall be sealed.

I'm going to be changing domains soon, which means that if I'm going to make any big changes to my blog, I need to do it THEN.

Things I would really love to get your help with :

1) Where to move to? I want to stick with wordpress, for sure. The wordpress.com sites don't allow me to tweak the CSS, which makes me a sad panda. What do you other Wordpress bloggers use? Self-hosted? Purchased-hosting?

2) Content shift. I love priesting, really I do. But I also love huntering. And enjoy my shaman...I have a ton of posts I could do on other classes, but I feel awkward hanging them all underneath "The Egotistical Priest" banner.

I -will- be posting on other classes. Because I can, and I rather strongly want to. I am aware that I will probably be alienating some of my audience by doing so, and that if the continuing popularity and success of my blog were my key factors, I should simply remain as niche as I can be.

Only thing is, I don't make money off my blog, and don't intend to. I worry about my readers only to the point where I'm not flat out lying to them or wasting their time - overall, I don't see how most people would be offended by me yammering on about shot rotations and damage if they're willing to suffer through my old fanfics. *grins*

So it would be smarter to stick just to priesting, but I don't think it's blog suicide to branch out.

So the question isn't "do you think it's okay if I start writing on other classes" so much as "do you think it's okay to start writing on other classes while still calling my site The Egotistical Priest?"

Since. Y'know. Priest =/= Hunter.

3) Naming? How should I rename the blog to fit the new content (assuming that's the way number two leans)?

I want to keep the "Egotistical" bit. It seems to be unique and shortens neatly down to the nickname "Ego".

And I've tried - wordpress.com won't let me use ego.wordpress.com because they require four letters in their links. Stingy, you ask me. Ego's a perfectly viable web adress! Even my fingers trip over typing "egotistical". *huffs*

But Egotistical Azeroth sounds...boring. Nondynamic.

Egotistical Ramblings, while rather embarrassingly accurate, doesn't tell the reader much about what to expect from the blog. Doesn't sound very wowish, I mean. I suppose the format of the posts would be well-advertised.

I toyed with the idea of "Space Goats Coast to Coast" but had to drop it when I realized I'd have non-drae characters and bloggers.

So...yes.

I come to your vaunted halls seeking advice and assistance. (Nice place you got here.)

1: A couple of us have purchased our own self hosting (Phae, myself, Siha). If you want that kind of flexibility, it's almost an inevitability that one will have to go that route sooner or later.

2: "Egotistical Priest" defines who you are and what your blog is. One look at the name in a search term or in a link, and a viewer will instantly know what they are going to read about.

IMO, if you change that name, you're going to lose the 'brand' that's been considered you for so long. There is no reason to think that you can't write about other classes under Egotistical Priest at all. Your blog, your way =). So if you keep the name and write about other classes, I won't have any panic attacks or anything.

I don't know why, but my brain conjured up an image of a very hardcore, metal, tattooe'd person playing the cello.

I would so go watch that in concert.

@Matticus

You don't think it'd be odd to read about EgoHunter on the Egotistical Priest blog?

I don't want to turn readers away, and the EgoHunter series wouldn't be a subseries - I'd write about whatever class I'd found interest in that week.

I definitely understand the branding - I'd lose a lot of good google webmaster mojo by swapping, but I'd probably lost a lot in the server move, regardless.

Where do you guys host through? Is it an online place, or do you have a quietly humming box at your place, doing double duty as a plant stand?

=] And thanks! It's good to be here. Until class is over, I still can't do a lot of the big stuff I've been meaning to (I haven't done anything with my blogroll in so long, it's shameful) but I hope to be more active here once the stress from homework and finals is over.

I don't think it would be at all wrong to keep Egotistical Priest. We just consider that "you".. You can write about whatever you want

I just switched from wordpress.com to a "self-hosted" site. My aatwow.com domain was at godaddy, so I decided to try out their hosting. It's okay. I don't know that I would "suggest" it to anyone, but I really have no problems with it. There are a number of Hosting providers that Wordpress.com suggests, you can start there unless someone else here has a specific provider they like to the exclusion of all others

You don't think it'd be odd to read about EgoHunter on the Egotistical Priest blog?

I don't want to turn readers away, and the EgoHunter series wouldn't be a subseries - I'd write about whatever class I'd found interest in that week.

Where do you guys host through? Is it an online place, or do you have a quietly humming box at your place, doing double duty as a plant stand?

Nah, I don't think so. Honestly, I've been known to skim a post or two or even mark it as read if I didn't think a post was going to be relevant to me in the first place. Either that, or I'd flag it for reading later when I had more time. Writing about hunters is only going to diversify your blog. It's not like your readers are going to instantly unsubscribe or stop reading egotistical priest after a couple of hunter posts. They might put it on pause for a while or something. On the other hand, you might get some leads from other hunters. No one can predict these readers, these crazy people ^^.

As for webhosting, I use Dreamhost. I know Phae and (I think) Siha does as well. I've been satisfied with them for the most part, but I know BA's gone up and down once or twice at odd times for some reason.

Generally people use a hosting service (unless they can afford to have at least one computer person dedicated to keeping the site up). This means that the hosting service supplies the computer, bandwidth and any infrastructure-type maintenance. There are lots of them out there. I thought there had been a post listing some off, but I can't find it. I use Dreamhost myself, but again there are lots of alternatives.

1) Where to move to? I want to stick with wordpress, for sure. ... What do you other Wordpress bloggers use? Self-hosted? Purchased-hosting?

If you feel up to installing and configuring wordpress on your own then purchase your own hosting. Let them deal with the headaches. At a minimum use a host that gives you shell access. If they give you that, they will probably give you everything else you will eventually need.

There are quite a few good ones out there. I use http://www.kattare.com/ . I highly recommend them. No problems and many technical customizations requests later (outside what is normally offered from a purchased host) they have been personal and quick.

Ego wrote:

2) Content shift. I love priesting, really I do. But I also love huntering. And enjoy my shaman...I have a ton of posts I could do on other classes, but I feel awkward hanging them all underneath "The Egotistical Priest" banner. .... So the question isn't "do you think it's okay if I start writing on other classes" so much as "do you think it's okay to start writing on other classes while still calling my site The Egotistical Priest?"

I think you should keep the brand. Self-hosting will give you the flexibility to separate the new content from the old. The simplest would be to rearrange your categories and menus to separate the content. People could decide if they want to 'add in' the new posts you are doing by choosing the right catagory. Or if you wanted to get complicated you could make it appear they are actually separate blogs while still being one blog underneath. For example priest.egotisticalpriest.com and egotisticalpriest.com where one is purely healing centric and the other is everything. There are quite a few possibilities but whatever you choose I wouldn't give up a brand you worked hard to create.

Ego wrote:

3) Naming? How should I rename the blog to fit the new content (assuming that's the way number two leans)? I want to keep the "Egotistical" bit. It seems to be unique and shortens neatly down to the nickname "Ego".

1) Where to move to? I want to stick with wordpress, for sure. The wordpress.com sites don't allow me to tweak the CSS, which makes me a sad panda. What do you other Wordpress bloggers use? Self-hosted? Purchased-hosting?

I use asmallorange.com and have never had any problems with them. They've always been quick to help me when I encounter difficulty. But they do use Fantastico to install Wordpress, if that matters to you.

@All
Thanks! Looks like EgotisticalPriest is here to stay - those here and those I've asked personally all think I'm nuts for thinking about changing it.

Like the slender reed, I bow down before the might of the storm.

@Fimlys
Well, it's good that they offer hosting, though it doesn't sound optimal. I'd forgotten that wordpress recommended hosts! Good thinking, there.

The array of options is dizzying, to be certain.

@Matt
I need to find a way to flag a post for reading at a later time...do you use google reader?

Looked up dreamhost and they definitely look promising! Not exactly cheap, but they look stable and have a ton of really nice stuff. It's been a while since I've had my own webspace, but I've got a few projects in various languages that would all be covered here - Ruby, PHP, mysql, access to log files, easy installation of phBB, Wordpress, and ZenCart...wow.

@JTone
Another vote for Dreamhost...I wish I was independantly wealthy and could turn my junk box at home into a server, but alas, I have not the time. Who does, right?

@Aos
Kattare, hmmm, very interesting...ouch! No databases on the cheap plan! Sounds like that'd work well for non-db sites, but I love sql. <3 Gotta have that database. Still, having quick responses from tech support is nearly priceless..

@Flaime
I've heard of asmallorange - and I've never twiddled with Fantastico, sounds nice from the description, I'd have to read some naysayers and see what the pitfalls were. Still, seems pretty nice, with room to grow.

The unlimited everything (aside from space) kinda scares me - I wonder if asimpleorange has more than its fair share of spammers and pr0n sites that might be sharing hosting with me? Course, the only way to ensure that's not happening is to get dedicated hosting...cheaper for a small hosting than Dreamhost is...hmmm.

@AosKattare, hmmm, very interesting...ouch! No databases on the cheap plan! Sounds like that'd work well for non-db sites, but I love sql. <3 Gotta have that database. Still, having quick responses from tech support is nearly priceless... fair share of spammers and pr0n sites that might be sharing hosting with me? Course, the only way to ensure that's not happening is to get dedicated hosting...

Kattare has a low tolerance for 'shenanigans' sites. So you don't have to worry about IPs being blacklisted or so on. But they are not inexpensive, this is probably a major drawback if all you need is a single site. I have a couple of projects that require unusual customization so I got one of the everything and the kitchen sink plans they offer which turns out fairly cost effective. I probably wouldn't consider them if you only need a single site with typical needs (php/mySQL).

I did a lot of research and asked some friends for advice. I'd nearly decided on Dreamhost, but at the last minute heard some recommendations that pushed me to ASmallOrange.

So that's where my blog is now, complete with shiny new domain name.

The domain name ensures that people won't have to re-link anything even if I decide I hate asmallorange - I can just transfer the domain name and not lose any of the stats or traffic (and not irritate my long suffering readers).

At least, that's the thought.

I got the Tiny plan from ASmallOrange, for six months. If I still like it at the end, I'll renew. Otherwise I'll find someone else.

So far I really like their support staff (quick and polite in replies) and I definitely like the price.

And now that I have a website link, I ought to go post in the appropriate forum, before Phaelia flogs me for breaking the rules and posting here first. *grins and scampers off*

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